Janderhoff's Engineers

Janderhoff lives in the hum of its forges.

And those forges are worked by the steady, callused hands of the dwarven people.

Engineers Symbol-Janderhoff by Midjourney

Surely you’ve heard the songs of proud folk carved from mountain stone, bound by tradition yet bold enough to reach for the heavens. The dwarves were always keepers of secrets buried deep in the rock, but make no mistake; their gaze is ever forward. They forge toward tomorrow as fiercely as they guard the past.

They hold the hammer both in prayer and in labor. To them, the act of shaping is devotion, and the spark that leaps from metal to metal is nothing less than a blessing from Torag himself. They worship through excellence, through precision, through the endless pursuit of creation perfected.

Many who dwell upon the surface view their ways with wary fascination. The lords of the feudal cities boast of noble blood, of ancestry and inheritance, but in Janderhoff, such things don't weigh as much. A name may open a door or two, but brilliance… brilliance is what will keep them open.

And so the city thrives on its sects, each devoted to mastery of their chosen art: the blacksmiths, the architects, the miners, each proud of their calling. Yet even among these paragons stands one guild whispered about in tones of awe and unease alike: the Engineers.

They are the thinkers behind the impossible. The ones who measure the breath of a machine and call it alive. Their craft births wonders that defy stone and silence alike: elevators that rise like prayers, bridges that span impossible gaps, devices whose purpose even their makers sometimes forget. Their worth is proven daily, for the marvels of the Sky Citadels would not stand without them. Yet their ideas are both feared and revered.

For what is genius, my friends, if not a useful form of madness?

Among their ranks there was once a man named Gusgroot Gearloose; though he preferred to be called simply Gus. Once, he was the pride of Janderhoff. A teacher - clever and meticulous - too curious for his own good. His peers called him steady as stone, though those who knew him well said there was fire under the calm - a quiet stubbornness that could melt iron.

For a time, his name was spoken with pride in Janderhoff’s halls.

Until it didn't.

The Creed of the Engineers

For the dwarven Engineers, precision is not merely practice: it is art, and in its way, an unshakable form of faith.

Imagine, if you can, the stubbornness of a stout child of stone paired with the intricate, often perplexing latticework of arithmetics and physical laws. What you gain is a force of creation that bends to no whim and bows to no mystery. Where the arcane defies reality through gestures and the coaxing of magic, and where the divine speaks in the language of gods, engineering is a translation of both; a painstaking, often incomprehensible translation, aye, but a translation nonetheless.

The Engineers of Janderhoff are a guild devoted to this discipline: to conceiving marvels in ink and parchment, and then coaxing them into being with patience, brilliance, and a rather dwarven sense of defiance. And because of this, they follow a creed older than any of their blueprints:

"Build nothing you cannot unbuild.”

But the creed, for all its clarity, is easier carved in stone than kept in the heart.

A tale of love & sorrow

Dwarves are steady folk, aye, but even stone cracks under enough weight. And though the Engineers pride themselves on their focused way of thinking - on building with sober minds and careful hands - no craft, no guild, no creed has ever managed to tame love. Or worse still, the fury that follows its undoing.

And that brings us to Gus.

The pride of Janderhoff at the time, never broke the creed in ink or innovation. His designs held true. His machines obeyed. His lessons were measured, and his work always meticulous.

No, his undoing came from something far simpler, and far more dangerous to a society built on lineage, reputation, and unyielding expectation.

You see… among his students was a young dwarf destined for the highest of the architectural caste. A man marked by bloodline and duty, raised to inherit a seat on the Council that shapes every hall and chamber of Janderhoff. And the two of them - Gus, the gifted teacher, and Roland, the promising prodigy - fell in love.

It was a quiet thing at first.

Roland by Midjourney

A stolen moment in the drafting chambers, a shared laugh over spilled ink, evenings spent discussing angles and arches until the lamps burned low. A bond forged in recognition and shared admiration; two minds that fit together like interlocking gears.

But in Janderhoff, where tradition stands heavier than granite, such love was not simply frowned upon. It was forbidden. Not for the reasons surface folk might imagine; dwarves hold no hatred for who a heart chooses.

As long as it is silent.

And as long as that love does not threaten the foundations carved for them.

No, the problem was lineage.

Expectation.

A future carved for Roland long before he was born.

So when their secret was uncovered, it was the boy’s family who moved first. The heir was locked away in his clan’s manor, cut off from his studies, his guild, and from the only man who had ever seen him as more than a title waiting to happen.

And as for Gus… He was seized, beaten bloody by hands that claimed to protect tradition, humiliated before strangers, and mutilated in a way meant to scar not just the body, but the very soul that dared to love beyond its station.

By the time he learned what had become of the young heir, it was already too late. The boy, crushed by despair and the weight of a future he could no longer bear, had taken his own life.

What he did next did not just shatter a household. It shamed his guild, stained his name, and cast a shadow over the Engineers of Janderhoff that would linger for years. For Gusgroot Gearloose, teacher of precision and discipline, wanted only one thing after all that: revenge.

And so he used his craft to kill.

The Fire in the Mountain

Not as a teacher. Not as an Engineer. Not even as the dwarf he had once been. Just a man carrying a grief too large for his chest and a pouch that weighed far too little for the destruction it held.

The blast came at the height of the parade, right when the line of architects passed beneath the archway carved with their family crest. A thunderclap made of powder and rage. Stone ruptured. Shields buckled. The carved crest split clean in half, raining shards onto the procession below.

A dozen dwarves died before they even realized what had happened. Most of them from the very family that had brutalized him… but not all. Blackpowder does not stop to choose its targets.

The parade dissolved into screams and smoke thick enough to choke a god. And in that chaos - that public humiliation, where the blood of kin ran across polished stone - the Engineers felt the first sting of shame. For though they had no part in Gus’s torment, every soul in Janderhoff saw what he had used: blackpowder, timing and precision. An engineer’s work, turned into a weapon. A perversion of a craft meant to sustain the mountain, not tear it open.

Within minutes the hunt began.

The Architects clamored for vengeance. The guards for justice. The Council for answers. But Gus knew every vent shaft, every abandoned service tunnel, every maintenance bridge above and below the great halls, because he had studied all of them and had drawn a lot of them himself. And so, by the time the dust settled, he was already gone.

A shadow slipping through the lower foundries. A bloodied figure seen climbing into a cargo lift that should have been sealed decades ago. By dawn, he had vanished into the surface world with nothing but his tools, his scars, and a silence that would cling to him for years like soot.

His guild never sought to defend him. His clan never spoke his name again. The mountain he once loved hummed on without him; steady, unbroken, but never quite the same.

And just like that, the pride of Janderhoff became a wanderer. A dwarf with no home, no name or purpose, and nothing left but the craft he had twisted for vengeance. But, worry not, for our story does not end in that ruin. Fate, it seems, is stubborn in its own right - and despite the tragedy, Gus was meant to rise once more.

A Proud Man

You may wonder why I’ve placed his story among the engineers, and you’d be right to ask. But here is a final truth worth keeping: Gusgroot Gearloose was many things. From a respected craftsman he became a pariah, and from an addict he rose again to become a companion, a hero, and - gods forgive me - a better dwarf than most who judged him.

He wore many titles in his life, but if one ever remained steady, it was the engineer’s mantle. Not the builder of marvels alone, mind you, but a man who built from a stubborn, quiet belief that anything worth keeping in this world could still be mended.

Later that night...

The fire had burned low by the time I closed my tale, and the tavern had settled into that thoughtful hush that always follows a story with too much truth in it. I remember lifting my mug to signal an end… and being handed another before I’d even taken a sip.

"From the gentleman at the back,” the young girl murmured.

I looked... and there he sat.

An old dwarf wrapped in a hooded cloak, shoulders still broad beneath the weight of his years, his face half-lost to shadow. But the eyes… aye, I knew those eyes. Dwarves change slowly. Time carves them, but it never quite erases what came before.

He lifted his mug and nodded.

A greeting and a thank you.

I returned the gesture, without saying a word. Respect speaks louder when given quietly.

When I glanced again, the corner was empty. Gus was gone as quietly as he had come.

I drank the ale he left me and allow myself a small, private smile.

It is a rare thing, to look up and find the protagonist of your tale sitting in the shadows.

Rarer still to know he approved of the telling.

-Thaddeus